she openly and candidly declared her attachment to the Catholic faith, and her wish that all should think with her, yet, following the footsteps of her Saviour, she declared that she would not force the conscience of any individual, but leave the grace of God to work their conversion ; but, at the same time, as the first magistrate of the realm, and the chief conservator of the peace of the kingdom, she apprized the people of her determination to punish severely those who should rashly disturb the peace and order of society, by exciting disturbances and violating the laws. Dr. Heylin admits that this proclamation commanded nothing contrary to the laws established, which might give trouble or offence to the reformed party. How unlike was the conduct of Elizabeth, her sister, who succeeded her on the throne. This lady has been extolled by bigots and hireling writers as the most illustrious and amiable of monarchs, and the most accomplished and virtuous of her sex; while her whole life was a continued scene of hypocrisy, debauchery, and cruelty. We have shewn her duplicity during the conspiracy to prevent her sister from ascending the throne; we shall now notice another instance of her deceitful conduct. As the reformed faction knew that Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, was the prop of their party in Harry's time, they now fixed their hopes on the daughter to oppose her sister Mary's intention. When the council were informed of these designs, they advised Mary to put Elizabeth under a temporary arrest, but she refused her consent to the measure, and endeavoured by persuasion and kind treatment to win Elizabeth over to the Catholic faith, and thus frustrate the expectations of the reformers. Bess made a shew of resistance at first, but when she learned that her repugnance was suspected not to arise from conscience, but from the intrigues of the factious, she threw herself on her knees before Mary, excused her obstinacy, and requested to be instructed in the Catholic faith, that she might see her errors, and embrace the faith of her fathers. From this time she accompanied her sister Mary to mass, opened a chapel in her own house, and outwardly demeaned herself as a Catholic. On coming to the throne she was crowned according to the Catholic ritual and took an oath to maintain the Catholic religion; yet, no sooner was she invested with the sceptre, than she resolved to abolish that religion which she had solemnly sworn to cherish and protect. And how did she proceed to accomplish her designs? Not in the benevolent and charitable footsteps of her sister Mary, so basely and unjustly termed "bloody," who did not enact a single new law nor create a single new offence to entrap her subjects into punishment; she did not, as Mary did, issue a proclamation, exhorting "all her good and loving subjects "to live together in quiet sort and Christian charity, leaving those de"vilish terms of Papist and heretic, and such like; and applying their "whole care, study and travel to live in the fear of God, exercising their conversation in such charitable and goodly doing," no, no, this halfroyal perjurer, this consummate hypocrite, this disgrace to her sex, who is known to few in this country, but as the "good queen Bess, the virgin queen," the "illustrious Elizabeth," through the gross lies of the vilest press that ever cursed and hoodwinked a nation; this hyæna in human shape, regardless of the rights of her people, secured to them by the maxims of the constitution and the stipulations of the

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Great Charter, resorted to the most compulsory and unconstitutional means to make the people forsake that faith which she had sworn to her sister Mary, who doubted her sincerity, she believed truly and conscientiously, , and had given the same sacred pledge at her coronation to protect. Elizabeth ascended the throne on the 17th of November, 1558, and her first parliament was opened on the 25th of January following, at which the queen assisted in state by attending a solemn high mass, after which a sermon was delivered by a reformed preachers In this parliament a bill was passed for suppressing the monasteries which Mary had re-established, and another was introduced for annexing the spiritual supremacy with the kingly authority. This bill met with much opposition, especially in the House of Lords, but it was finally carried by a court majority. By this act, Hume says, the crown was vested with the whole spiritual power, to be exercised WITHOUT THE CONCURRENCE OF HER PARLIAMENT, or even of the convocation; it might repress all HERESIES, might establish or repeal all canons; might alter every point of discipline; might ordain or abolish any religious rite or ceremony; and this at the mere whim or caprice of a lascivious and perfidious woman. If Mary was unacquainted with the constitution of the country, it is clear that Elizabeth and her myrmidons were totally disregardless of its principles, by rendering her independent of parliament, and making her an absolute despot. You tell us, modern editors of the Book of Martyrs, that Mary was "a slave to superstition" that "she thought to domineer over the rights of private judg "ment, and trample on the privileges of mankind," but pray shew us, ye stupid declaimers against the superstitions of Popery! ye brawlers against despotism and the dark ages! shew us, we say, the age or country when a pope or council usurped such an unlimitted power as was here granted to an unprincipled woman, thus constituted head of the Church of England! You may talk of priesteraft, of tyranny, of domineering over the rights of private judgment, and trampling on the privileges of mankind, but you cannot produce such an instance of venal dependance and base slavish submission to spiritual and temporal thraldom, in the records of Catholic history, as this nation was reduced to by the corrupt parliament of the falsely called "good queen Bess."

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This measure being carried, it was now determined by Elizabeth and her ministers, who were certainly some of the ablest, but the most wicked and diabolical, that ever directed the councils of England, to extirpate the Catholic faith out of the island, not by preaching and persuasion, but by the most sanguinary laws and proceedings that could be devised by merciless beings. DooIt was made death to exercise the inalienable privilege of mankind, freedom of conscience, by attending or celebrating mass. Fines were imposed for absence from the new-fangled church worship, which Catholics could not attend without a violation of conscience. Thus it was Elizabeth, and not Mary, that actually, not in thought, domineered" over the rights of private judgment," and trampled upon the privileges of mankind." We have before said that Mary invented no new laws or offences to punish her subjects, but Elizabeth added numberless penal statutes to the code of laws existing, all of which were infringements on the rights of conscience and the principles of the British constitution. It was not till her reign that persons were

liable to punishment for what was called constructive treason! while it was made high treason to profess the same faith that was preached by the apostles of Christ, that was introduced into this island by one of their successors, the holy monk Augustin, and had continued to be professed by our forefathers for one thousand years. We will here restate our former words from the ORTHODOX JOURNAL for December, 1816, taken from an article in which we proved that ELIZABETH WAS AN ODIOUS PERSECUTOR OF CONSCIENCE! In framing these merciless laws, the artful ministers had so interwoven religion and civil allegiance to gether, that an impeachment in either kind was equally serviceable to their purpose. The consequence was, no less than 200 persons suffered death in this reign only, many of them under circumstances of shocking barbarity merely for exercising or embracing the Catholic faith; for their lives were offered them on condition of renouncing their religion, and conforming to the established church; an evident proof that the crime for which they were executed was not for conspiting against the state, but for refusing to submit to an arbitrary and unjust control over their minds. Beside these, many Catholics were doomed tos pine ini loathsome prisons, others were driven out of the kingdom to avoid the like confinement; and the rack is acknowledged by unimpeachable historians, to have been in constant use, to extort confession of treasons that were never thought of. It is computed, that before the year 1538,) which was anterior to the greatest heat of the persecutions, the number of persons who suffered death, banishment, imprisonment, or dbss of estates, purely for their religion, amounted to about tweluk zhundred ! Whilst Elizabeth was thus persecuting with cold-blooded cruelty her Catholic subjects in England, she was engaged in stirring upthe Belgian Calvinists to revolt against the king of Spain; and encouraging the res bellion of Knox and his associates against the queen of Scotlandy whom she looked upon as her rival for the sceptre; and enforcing the new doctrines of the Reformation in Ireland, by military slaughter, and butchery, as well as extirminating penal statutesme To enter into a des tail of the horrid atrocities committed on the people of Ireland by the agents of this queen and her wicked counsellors, would only disgust and tire the reader, but we cannot refrain from noticing a few facts, as they elearly demonstrate that religious persecution was not exclusively prac tised by Catholic governments. It is stated by the historians of that country, that thousands of the natives were swept off by the strict en forcement of the penal laws, whose only crime was the serving their Maker in the simplicity of their hearts, and presuming to exercise their own choice of the road to Heaven. The heat of persecution, and the disorder occasioned by civil disturbances prevented the obtaining a re gular list of all the sufferers; but an account has been preserved of about two hundred Irish Catholics who underwent the punishment of death during this reign, solely for the profession of their religion. Of these six were prelates, namely, Patrick O'Kelly, bishop of Mayor Dermot O'Hurle, archbishop of Cashel Richard Creagh, archbishop of Armagh, and Edmund Magauran, his successor; Cornelius O'Duane, bishop of Down; and Edward O'Callagher, bishop of Derry. The two first of these are reported to have suffered the most excruciating tortures, previous to their execution, the former having his legs broken with ham

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mers, and needles thrust under his nails; the other had his legs immersed in jack-boots filled with lime and water, until his flesh was burnt to the bone, in order to compel him to take the path of supremacy. It was a common thing to beat with stones the shorn heads of the clergy until their brains gushed out, and many were stretched on the rack, or pressed under weights. The year before Elizabeth's death about 50 of the monks and clergy obtained permission of her majesty, to retire from Ireland to the Continent, and a vessel was appointed to convey themis They embarked at Slattery, as they were ordered, but had not proceeded far on their voyage, when they were all thrown overboard and drowned.The captain and officers of the ship were confined for a time, by order of the queen, to cover her from the disgrace attendant on such an atrocious deed, performed by her directions, and were afterwards rewarded with a grant of the lands belonging to the murdered individuals. Nor was this benignant sovereign less kind to Protestant non-conformists than to Popish recusants. By looking into Stow, Brandt, Limborch, Collier, Neale, and other Protestant historians, it will be found that in the year 1573, one Peter Burchet was examined,' on the score of heresy, by Sands, Bishop of London, but he recanted his errorson Two years afterwards, 27 heretics were at one time, 11 at another, and 5 at a third, condemned, most of them by the same Protestant prelate, for their erroneous doctrines. Of these 20 were whipped and banished, others bore their faggots, and two of them, John Peterson, and Henry Tarwort, were burnt to death in Smithfield. In 1583, John Lewis was burnt at Norwich, for denying the divinity of our Saviour, and Francis Kett M. A suffered the same kind of death at the same place,” for similar opinions in 1589. Two years afterwards, William Hackett, was hanged for heresy, in Cheapside. Five others were also put to death in this reign, for being Brownists. Most of the executions took places in consequence of Elizabeth's issuing an ecclesiastical commis sion, hitherto unparalleled for its arbitrary and extensive powers.n This commission consisted of forty-four members, twelve of v whom only were sclergymen, and the rest laymen; and any three were authorized to vexercise the whole power of the commission,→→ Their jurisdiction, says Mr. Reeve, who takes his account from Hume and Neale, fextended over the whole kingdom, and over all orders of men their power was to visit and reform all errors, heresies, and schisms, too regulate all opinions, and to punish every breach of uniformity in the public worship and THEIR POWER WAS SUBJECT TO NO CONTROL. They had directions to proceed in the execution of their office, not only by the legal methods of juries and witnesses, but by any other means they should judge fit; that is, by the rack, by tortures, and imprisonment. The punishments they inflicted were arbitrary, and directed by no rule. Their fines were so heavy as to bring total ruin upon those who had the misfortune to offend. The very suspicion of being an offender was enough to make any man such in the eyes of those inquisitors, who in that case were authorized to administer an official oath, which compelled the suspected person to answer all questions, though tending to criminate himself or his dearest friends. So cruel and so - despotic were the powers which the supremacy was supposed in that

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age to confer upon the crown, and which Elizabeth exercised to their full extent.

These atrocious cruelties have been carefully concealed from the people of England by the bigotted adherents of the Reformation, as it is called, while the actions of the upright and honest Mary, whose heart was truly Catholic and English, have been blackened, vilified, and misrepresented. But the day is come when the veil of hypocrisy and falsehood shall be removed from the eyes of a blinded and misguided people, and they will then see the Truth in all her glorious attributes, and Mary's character will appear more brilliant than it has hitherto been disfigured. Let it always be borne in mind, that Mary did not begin to exercise coercive measures until the peace of her kingdom was broken by insurrection, and her life was menaced by the enthusiastic reformers. That she did not require them to embrace a faith of her own coining, but to return to that faith which had been the creed of the whole kingdom for one thousand years before, and was then the creed of the most illustrious and virtuous monarchs, statesmen, generals, and divines, in Christendom. Elizabeth, on the other hand, persecuted the professors of the old faith because they would not consent to relinquish doctrines which they knew were of divine authority, for opinions merely human and liable to change. She begun her persecutions without any provocation on their part, for while she was harassing the Catholics with tortures and confiscations, they were not only submissive to the laws of the state, but they actually took up arms in her defence, when the kingdom was threatened with invasion by a Catholic sovereign, the husband of Mary, and such as had property left were prodigal in their offers to equip men and fit out vessels for the defence of her throne and their country's independence. Such base ingratitude such remorseless injustice such unparalleled cruelty-was the base and tiger-hearted Elizabeth guilty of towards her loyal Catholic subjects, yet is she stiled the good queen Bess," while her truly virtuous sister Mary, whose private life was unspotted and blameless, and who had to deal with a people heated by fanatical opinions and urged to insubordination by the most perfidious demagogues, is represented as the " bloody queen Mary," and her reign as one continued scene of persecutions, though two years had elapsed from her coming to the throne before any suffered on the score of religion. "Compare," we say, to repeat our own words in the ORTHODOX JOURN. for Nov. 1818," this conduct of the virgin queen with the de claration of her bloody sister, before quoted, in which the latter assures her subjects, that, although she could not dissemble nor hide that religion which she had always professed, she did not intend to compel any of her subjects thereunto, but leave it to their own common consent; exhorting them at the same time to lay aside all uncharitable terms towards each other, such as Papist and heretic, carrying themselves peaceably and in Christian charity with all. The good Bess, however, possessed no such merciful and laudable feeling. She could dissemble her religion in the reign of her sister, and conspire with others to dethrone her. She could submit to be crowned according to the popish custom could swear to protect the church in all her rights and privileges, and almost instantly violate the obligation of her oath. She could cause laws to be passed